 | | | | | | | | |
|
| |
| In Our Time
|  | |  | MISSED A PROGRAMME?
Go to the Listen Again page | |
|
| | | | PROGRAMME INFO | | | |
| | | The big ideas which form the intellectual agenda of our age are illuminated by some of the best minds. Melvyn Bragg and three guests investigate the history of ideas and debate their application in modern life. | | | | | LISTEN AGAIN | | | |
|
|
| | PRESENTER | | | |
|  | | | | BIOGRAPHY
| | | | | "I'm fascinated by the fact that we live in a time when so many people are doing fantastic work, and thinking in areas which it's not remotely possible for me to keep up with & and these people are prepared to talk about it. They're prepared to come on In Our Time and other programmes on Radio 4 and try and talk to the rest of us ..." |
| |
| | |
| PROGRAMME DETAILS | | | |
|  | | THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
Edward Gibbon wrote of the decline of the Roman Empire, "While that great body was invaded by open violence, or undermined by slow decay, a pure and humble religion gently insinuated itself into the minds of men, grew up in silence and obscurity, derived new vigour from opposition, and finally erected the triumphant banner of the cross on the ruins of the Capitol."
But how far is the growth of Christianity implicated in the destruction of the great culture of Rome? How critical were the bawdy incursions of the Ostrogoths, the Visigoths and the Vandals to the fall of the Roman Empire? Should we even be talking in terms of blame and decline at all?
St Augustine wrote about the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century AD, Edward Gibbon famously tackled it in the eighteenth and it is a question that preoccupies us today.
Contributors
Charlotte Roueché, historian of late antiquity at Kings College London
David Womersley, Fellow and Tutor at Jesus College, Oxford and editor of Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Penguin, 2000)
Richard Alston, Lecturer in Classics at Royal Holloway, University of London
| | |
RELATED LINKS
| |
| |
|
| | | | |
|
